'The team I was in could scrap. I am not sure this team can': Peter Reid sounds alarm bells over Everton

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There is no club to which membership of the Premier League matters more than Everton. Their proudest boast is they have played more top-flight games than anyone else. The number is clocked up, like the mileage on a car dashboard, on the big screen at Goodison Park before every home game. Only Arsenal have been continuous members of the top division for longer.

There have been some summers when the thought has gnawed away that this might be the season when it finishes but not this one. This was the summer when, in terms of gross spending, Everton out-bought Liverpool almost two to one. It was the summer in which Wayne Rooney returned. It was the summer in which they could plan for life away from Goodison Park. There would be European football.

Now there is something approaching panic in the blue half of Merseyside. The rough start – games against Chelsea, Tottenham and both Manchester clubs – shocked Ronald Koeman when he was shown the fixture list. Defeat at home to Burnley produced convulsions and, should they lose at Brighton on Sunday, Everton will find themselves in the kind of relegation scrap they have not remotely prepared for.

Peter Reid was at Goodison Park, watching from Derek Hatton’s box, and was horrified by what he saw against Burnley. When Hatton was running Liverpool Council and Reid was at his peak, Everton were in a similar situation to the one they find themselves in now: the Goodison crowds in open rebellion, the manager fearing for his job, the spectre of relegation ominously poised in the background.

In 1984, Everton fought back, won the FA Cup and followed it up with the championship and the Cup-Winners’ Cup. The story is at the forefront of Reid’s newly-published autobiography, called Cheer Up Peter Reid after the song Sunderland fans once serenaded him with, but nobody expects a repetition.

“I played in an Everton side which was lacking in confidence,” he recalled. “There were cushions on the pitch and leaflets out. We changed things round through hard work and then the confidence came. This Everton team is in a scrap. The team I was in could scrap. I am not sure this team can.

“I am not one of those ex-professional footballers who says the players are not having a go, like when Carragher says they are ‘cowards’, but there is a lack of confidence there. If we are not careful, we will be in a dogfight and I am not sure they are ready for that.”

Like many Everton fans, Reid was nonplussed by comments from the club’s owner, Fahrad Moshiri, that the Burnley defeat was the only one that was not “expected”.

“No, you are wrong, mate,” said Reid. “Expectations are higher than that so I disagree and I tell you what, ask everyone who goes to the game, and they will say the same as me. That is wrong from the top in my opinion.”

Reid argued that there was a lot wrong from the top during the summer spending. The team that Howard Kendall turned into champions had strikers of the calibre of Graeme Sharp and Andy Gray. The one Koeman controls sold its sharpest edge and failed to replace Romelu Lukaku. Since August 21, Everton have managed two league goals.

“It was common knowledge Lukaku was going to go last January,” said Reid. “Go and get a striker. I know it’s hard. I managed Sunderland and it’s hard to get the top ones but when you are Everton it is different. I am sure Koeman has contacts and there is Steve Walsh (the director of football who brought Jamie Vardy, Riyhad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante to Leicester). Go and get them.”

Seen through Reid’s eyes, Rooney is largely absolved from blame but he finds the treatment of Gylfi Sigurdsson baffling. “I don’t think that at Swansea, Sigurdsson played left side. He was at the hub and, without being too critical of Mr Koeman, if I am buying a player for £45m, I want him to play in his position.

“There was optimism but now we have seven points. When you spend £140m and lose your top goalscorer – who to be fair I never saw in big games – you have to get a striker in.”

Reid’s criticism of Koeman extends beyond the summer spending to the way he has managed his team. When Koeman was brought to Goodison, Moshiri remarked that the club wanted a “Hollywood manager” to compete with the glamour of Klopp, Mourinho and Guardiola. The Dutchman seems to be directing a disaster movie.

“He has the money to get in top players but, if you look at the top players, I tell you what they do, they put in a shift. Everton at the minute, they look scared to put in a shift. They look like they cannot move. That is the manager and the manager has to get them doing that. I don’t care if it’s Ronald Koeman, European Cup winner or whatever.”

The city of Liverpool is an infinitely more beautiful place than it was in January 1984 when it was being ripped apart by the conflict between the Thatcher government and Derek Hatton’s Militant led council.

However, Everton are in the same place they were when they travelled to Stoke’s Victoria Ground for a third-round FA Cup tie. Then, Kendall’s dressing-room speech consisted merely of opening the windows so his players could hear the Merseyside support. His only words were: ‘Do it for them’.

“We had got beat 3-0 at Wolves, we were useless,” Reid recalled. “Then the Coventry game came up and we were hopeless. We turned it around at Stoke, where Howard opened the dressing-room window and we heard the fans.

“That’s when it turned around and it wasn’t to do with great play. It was winning individual battles. You can still do it now. That is what Everton have got to get back to.”

Cheer Up Peter Reid is published by Trinity Mirror Sports Media